


Ignorance Being the Best Bliss of All

by Unseelieknight



Category: Slayers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Bisexual Female Character, Domestic, F/M, Feelings Realization, Sex Talk, no editing we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 10:37:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15192956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unseelieknight/pseuds/Unseelieknight
Summary: Xellos finds himself dawning on the fact that he and Filia have grown domestic. And that Filia is perfectly fine with this development.





	1. In This House We Built Something

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's a little slow at the uptake, but what can you expect. He's a monster, they don't do domestic.

He hadn’t really looked at it like this before, from an outsider's perspective, but it was very odd indeed. 

 

Him, enjoying her company as they were enjoying a pleasant afternoon tea. Sitting amongst her frilly lace doilies and her pink cushions and wall decoration plates. Sitting across from her, even.

 

He recalled fondly that just over a year ago, they had been fighting over the location of the Temple of the Fire Dragon King. Standing tall and proud on some tall rock, challenging each other’s concept of location, going so far as to childishly mock another as they argued over it. It was great fun for him, egging her on and watching her face contort into hideous displays of hatred. How she had tried to calm her nerves by claiming she was better than him, how she had ever so valiantly ignored the faces he made at her - not so much a last resort to infuriate her as it was just fun.

 

By the end of that little adventure, she had chased him down through the sky, hoping to bat him out existence with a laser beam - a terribly futile effort on her part, but, it’s the thought that counts.

 

Now they were sitting at her little breakfast table, sipping tea and enjoying a fresh batch of biscuits and cookies, as if they - a vile monster known for being a dragon slayer, and a hopeful golden dragon priestess and would-be-martyr of the sins of her ancestors - were a couple of old friends sitting down to catch up on things like who they had been spying on that week, the gossip being shared at the bingo parlour and the oh so shocking development on their favourite telanovas. 

 

They had come so far, from enemies that fought each other on any ground to teammates who cared about each other’s well being and even save the world together. To, whatever it was that they were now. He certainly had no clue.

 

Truly, this, whatever it was, was rather ridiculous sight for such a powerful monster such as himself. Especially with all the pink in the room. And that ‘live, laugh, love’ sign hanging by his head. He had ought to have keeled over ages ago just from the positive energy radiating from the little home, in fact, he shouldn’t have even been able to go inside, there was just that much of it seeping through the cracks.

 

But, he had to admit, he really did like a good cup of tea, the logistics of his existence here be damned, he would be having tea with Filia at three. 

 

It was at the point now where he was expected. Something certain to occur no matter how much effort Filia had put into trying to encourage him to leave her alone and get lost. He liked that too. The  _ absolute fact _ aspect of her habits, made something to ground him in reality when he had a rather crazy day at the office.

 

Of course, there was another motive, something more than just the good cup of tea he came to expect from Filia. That being that the monster race couldn’t be going around, allowing the upbringing of the last ancient dragon in existance to go unchecked. It was just bad business for them. 

 

And so, being here, in Filia’s home every day at three for a nice cup of tea, it was a job. It’s description being something along the lines of making sure Miss Filia Ul Copt, the last remaining golden dragon of her denounced Temple of the Fire Dragon King, didn’t put any silly ideas into the young little dragon’s head, like “strive for world peace,” or “squander your potential like your mother and sell easily breakable wares.” Just, they were such useless ideas for a member of the Ancient Dragon race. Especially for the monster race if they eventually sought to try and gain the dragon in their ranks.

 

Which, Xellos personally figured that wouldn’t really work out well for the monsters, simply because when he had tried to bargain with Valgaav, the dragon essentially spit in his face. If the previous incarnation hadn’t budged for the world, Xellos doubted they’d be able to encourage the dragon to do much of anything when their mind was set.

 

But the issue now lay in the fact that the young dragon, well, had not even hatched yet. 

 

Yet he was here, sipping his lovely cup of tea - 

 

As if he’ll never announce this fact to Filia, but she really did make lovely tea blends. When they first started this thing, they were drinking the same old run of the mill store bought variety, Until Filia had figured to design her own, and use Xellos as her taste tester. He enjoyed most of them, but made note that the one she seemed to prefer serving him was the only blend that took him point five seconds longer to come up with an acceptable insult for. ‘Rather considerate of you,’ he’d tease her if he ever found the will to tell her he actually liked the tea.

 

In his lovely, horribly disfigured personal cup - 

 

He had requested she make him one, to match her very ornate and delicate little cup. “It’d be a very aesthetically pleasing image,” he had smiled like a cockroach, “us both drinking from matching cups,” he cheerfully said. He was sure she wouldn’t do it, as the rage she had been expelling matched the sort she gave off when Mrs. Hemmingway down the road suggested she should start looking for a man. But, the fact that she had gone and done it anyway, proving him wrong, had pleased him more than the shape of the cup itself would ever bother him. Though he did throw a few choice insults regarding her ability to spin clay and fire a klem properly.

 

In Filia’s positively, lovely little home.

 

It was very, very strange, when you looked at it from an outsider’s point of view.

 

Why on earth, why by the heavens above and the hells below, would he be willing to sit down and enjoy a cup of tea with this golden dragon. He had all the reasons why he himself shouldn’t be enjoying this as much as he did, but he couldn’t figure why Filia herself allowed this to happen.

 

So he asked her.

 

“Filia,” he spoke, setting his beautifully ugly purple and red tea cup onto a not-so-matching pink saucer, “aren’t we the odd couple.”

 

Well not so much as asked as he had stated a fact. Or even asked her why she allowed this into her new, normal and wholesome way of life. Best to just tease and torment her a bit, her reactions are really quite amusing.

 

Filia didn’t even begin to amuse him, she just glanced ta him, from her little crossword puzzle, long since past sputtering at his nonsense statements, and she says with the tone of someone who can’t quite believe the stupidity of their conversation partner, “well obviously.”.

 

He hadn’t be frowning before, but her complete acceptance of this fate had him slightly turn his lips into an ever so slight frown. Disappointing. Downright rude of her of her, in fact. Being so accepting of the world and its mysteries all the time.

 

She sighs, straightens up to look at him proper, “What I mean Xellos, is that it’s been odd since day one. How on earth did a golden dragon end up even tolerating you more than a second, well it’s beyond me.

 

“Not to mention the whole,” she gestured grandly to the nothing in the air before her, expecting him to fill in the blanks himself, “of course we’re odd.”

 

Xellos finds this act to be rather amusing, her loss of words anway. But her complete lack of a definition for them and their amiability seems just as bizarre as the whole circumstance itself. 

 

He twists his lips into a big and silly smile, “Filia, you need to be able to explain things better if you plan on being a mother.” When in doubt, always resort to teasing, that’s his motto.

 

She scowled at him. Bit off a corner of a triangular shaped cookie in such a way he felt the need to shift in his seat just a little, “you’re a monster,” she said, “and I’m a dragon.”

 

That brought back the genuine smile to his face, “of course.” He oh so enjoyed it when these facts of the world were brought up. Making her remember how they shouldn’t be playing nice. She seemed to forget that fact so often.

 

And then he took another sip of his favourite tea in his favourite tea cup in his favourite little home with his favourite dragon and he was placcid for the moment.

 

But, well, her summary didn’t really explain the why, he couldn’t help but to think, the miniscule frown returning to grace his features. Why this was the way it was, and not, well, him sticking her through his staff as was the usual order of the world. 

 

He took in their surroundings, the ones that really should be weakening him to the point to near death with all the positive energy radiating from them. He acknowledged the little egg in the cutesy little basket by the window, unhatched and healthy, his job that really didn’t need work put into it yet. 

 

Neither of which were things or reasons for him to be here. 

 

He remembered the tea cup, and the tea blend, both made especially with him in mind their creator’s mind. 

 

Just an outcome of spending so much time in each other’s company he supposed. 

 

He looked at the dragon, the creator of this strange space, the soon-to-be mother, the designer of his cup and tea. She had returned to her crossword, paying him and his nonsense no mind, humming a little song to herself, a tune she had most definitely caught from young miss Amelia. 

 

Xellos really should have been bothered by that little melody alone. 

 

But he was fine. 

 

He had no itching sensations, no overwhelming urge to just give up and die, no dread whatsoever. Just, acceptance that that song was the one she wanted to hum.

 

His opened his eyes, hoping, thinking, he would be able to see something more clearly if he got a little more serious in deducing the cause of whatever it was that was odd.

 

“Xellos, you aren’t going to scare me by making this out to be more serious than it is,” Filia said, not looking up from her little game, furrowing her brows in annoyance she had to pay him more attention when it was clear she was quite busy.

 

He was right. He had found his answer. Just the way she said it, eyes unmoving from her paper, compete trust in her senses that she knew what he was up to.

 

But the fact hadn’t disgusted him, not even a smidge. 

 

They had grown domestic. 

 

The great dragon slayer and most vile monster to grace the humans, Xellos Metallium, had become domesticated by a golden dragon who proclaimed love and acceptance by the vase load. 

 

It was downright putrid. Horrific. No wonder it had been bothering him so much. He needed to leave. Right now. Be gone.

 

So he stepped into the astral plane and left the domestic contentment he had found himself. He left the frilly pink cushions, his unfinished and unstarted business of raising Val to be a terror, the creations of Filia’s hand made just for him, and most importantly, the dragon herself, who had managed to cajole him into this whole mess of domestic bliss. 

 

He had done so, in such a rush, he had not been aware his favourite little tea cup had fallen from his hand. Had not noticed his favourite tea blend had spilled across the polished tiles of Filia’s kitchen. Hadn’t even been able to enjoy the shrill shriek of Filia’s voice as she startled to the sudden noise of china on tile. 

 

He had not been around to hear Filia curse him out for breaking the cup she had made for him.

  
  


\---

  
  


Filia had long since accepted that she and Xellos had grown rather domestic after everything that happened. It was just, a thing. Like how Val being reborn was a thing. 

 

Sure she had grieved over it, how she had been so frustrated with the truth of the matter that was their relationship. They had started off with petty arguments at every turn, his need to tease and torment her at every possibility. Their stubborness to agree on anything that either one of them could be right about or even benefit the quest. That whole fiasco with the marriage temple, had been especially bad. 

 

But then there were the times, the strange strange instances where he had saved her from doom, which by all accounts, he should have taken great joy in observing happening to her, a golden dragon. The time on that little island between Alto and Bantone, where he saved them from the blast. The time he saved her from a pile of falling rocks when he was fighting Valgaav. 

 

Surely, surely she hadn’t been so important to him compared to killing Valgaav that he needed to protect her from death. Surely he had a use for her and was just keeping her alive for her to achieve that goal.

 

That thought was only a thought to keep her grounded to reality. She couldn’t very well consider that he actually enjoyed her existence enough to want to her live. That implied things. Things she really didn’t have the time or energy to worry about.

 

But then, she recalled when she helped him afterwards, let herself become his crutch as his body repaired the damage made to it, he had said it wasn’t something he had ever expected her to do. And she had hastily told him to not think about it, because there had been no time for a discussion. 

 

Their relationship wasn’t strictly business related when they allowed themselves to get caught up in each other’s well being like that. Her sigh shook her shoulders.

 

She spent a lot of her alone time, while they were searching for miss Amelia and mister Goury after they had been separated, thinking about it and its implications. Made herself sick with grief and worry over her now rather complicated feelings towards the detestable Xellos. She couldn't hate him if he had kept saving her like that.

 

She half expected him to show up and rescue her - them, them from their perils of ghost ships and sea traveling. Because she had grown accustomed to that sort of behaviour from him.

 

But then, she didn’t see him for a long time. Which was nice. Allowed her time to think.

 

But eventually, he did show up again, when she was coming to terms with her ancestors genocide, rooted in jealousy and fear of the ancient dragons. After she had cried. After she had sought to learn the truth, he did show up.

 

He always had a knack for inopportune moments to grace her with his presence. 

 

And he had decided the best course of action, after everything they had done together, was to use her life as leverage, a tool to gain what he wanted. 

 

She couldn’t believe it. He had told her “be still if you want to live.” It had made no sense, what with all the life saving he had been doing for her. She did not understand why on earth he would want to kill her. Surely, surely this hadn’t been his plan, to use her life to get what he wanted from the Supreme Elder. 

 

So she steadied herself and made her believe it was all just a fool’s gambit, that simply he just missed tormenting her. 

 

Then her father said he could have cared less about if Xellos killed her or not. Which was something of a given, now that she could hear her fellow gold dragons cry out in anguish and pain as they futility battled the otherworlders outside. Which meant that Xellos probably knew this would happen, and that the whole using her hostage thing was only a game for the two of them to play.

 

And well, that was that.

 

Xellos didn’t twist her neck anyway. He didn’t stab her, letting her see her own insides spew out into the cold tile of the tomb. He just, allowed her to continue to live.

 

But then they had a fight, and he stole the magic blast she had intended to hit him with to fuse with his own and open the barrier himself. That plan failed of course.

 

Oh, she had desperately wanted to smack him over the head with her mace for that. She had clearly stated she had never wanted to fuse magic with him - ever. 

 

But she couldn’t bring herself to. It would have been nice, a little stress relief, but not, not important in the grand scheme of things. He would have his way, and she would begrudgingly accept him for who he was. A monster.

 

But watching him contort into a useless ball of dread by Amelia’s positive singing, that was well enough.

 

Filia sighed, he hadn’t ever harmed her. Maybe sure, her pride. But never outright attacked her, wanted to see her bleed or whatever nonsense monsters get themselves off to.

 

They didn’t meet for a little while longer. But it always felt like Xellos had been protecting her throughout the final battle, keeping himself in front of her, ready to blast whoever dared to touch her out of the sky at the very thought crossing their mind.

 

That was odd, but, then again, they ended up caring about each other’s well being.

 

And when Valgaav had taken them to that space, that space that nearly tore Xellos into millions of non-existent pieces, she had desperately wanted to move, move and try to sooth his agony that rang throughout the space, the screams of his pain being a backdrop to their rather casual conversation regarding the state of the world and what was to be done about it. But she had been crucial to the conversation, the mediator between the monster-dragon-god Valgaav and the humans. She couldn’t very well fight the void to run to his side.

 

It… had made sense for her to want to help him. She had done it before. She’ll do it again.

 

By the end of it, she had made up her mind to save the world, and Xellos teased her and her struggles, and she called him awful, and he smiled and said something about her being her - that she couldn’t quite hear well, because Lina had been yelling about the end of the world happening. 

 

So then, it was over, and she was a mom, and she opened a shop to sell her wares, and Xellos was still a rather prominent figure in her life, appearing nearly everyday at three for tea.

 

Which was fine, she decided, cleaning up his mess.

 

She glanced down at the cup, broken into two halves, it had been his favourite, always taking it out of the cupboard no matter how much he said he thought it was of terrible craftsmanship. 

 

And the sickly sweet smelling tea she had made just for him, pooling at her feet.

 

He really didn’t approve of the things she did for him. Grumbling, she cleaned up the mess, hoping that maybe he wasn’t hanging around to hear her catching remarks on his ability to hold delicate objects.

 

She held the broken pieces of the cup, and thought it’d be a shame to just throw it out and make him a new one. A waste of materials too. 

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


Xellos didn’t dare to return to that house for nearly three months. Well, three months, three days and three hours. So it was well past tea time when he showed up, and he thought that was good, get out of the habit of domesticality and just use her to get a laugh. Brilliant plan.

 

But he had phased into the mortal plane in the same place he had always showed up; in her little kitchen, standing next to the cupboard to take out his little cup. And he had even started the actions, damn his muscle memory.

 

But he had stopped when he noticed the gold seam running through the cup. What wasn’t there before.

 

Filia came marching into the kitchen, huffing and puffing at him for showing up just when she was about to start dinner. Yammering on about good manners and how doors were acceptable ways of entering homes.

 

To which he just held out the little disfigured cup, “did you throw it at wall?” he asked simply, oddly mesmerized by the gold piecing the cup together in an uneven and jagged line. 

 

She frowned, “no Xellos, you dropped it when you left last time.” 

 

Well. That made sense. It would probably be just dust now if she had thrown it at the wall in anger.

 

“Are you staying for dinner then, or are you just going to leave again?” she asked, moving past him to get at her pantry to start preparing to make her meal.

 

He didn’t say anything. He just watched, eyes agape in horror, in shock, that his goal had been so easily shattered.

 

She looked over her shoulder in that way she does, where she’s tired of his nonsense, peering into his eyes, clearly determined to cook based on his answer. He didn’t even need food to survive and yet here she was, including him in on her game of house. 

 

And he was fine with it.

 

He wasn’t clutching his chest in true and utter agony at the very thought of it, that they were so ingrained into being domestic that she shrugged it off like water on on a duck. 

 

That was, well, shocking. That she had come to terms so quickly, hell, it had only been six, no, nine months by this point of their little tea time activity. 

 

“When did we become so domestic?” He asked.

 

She sighed and pinched her nose, as if she was dreading having this conversation with him.

 

“Well, since, you showed up,” she gestured to him, “when you first showed up at the shop, two months after we save the world.” 

 

He didn’t move. Hands carefully holding the little cup, tracing the lines of gold.

 

“Then you just sort of, did whatever you wanted.” She sighed, pulling out some bowls for a salad, “I yelled at you a lot, but got used to it and even after we quieted down, you never,” she paused her movements, “you never left.” 

 

Until three months ago. Were the words spoken by the elephant in the room.

 


	2. This is a Pure Household, Thank You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Xellos and Filia have talk about them. About sex.

Filia doesn’t really want to have this discussion with him. 

 

It would just revolve around her morals as a woman who had once served the temple of the Fire Dragon King as a priestess, and her current position of allowing a monster who would have no trouble killing her - probably. She suspected he might waver a little, have a moment, a millisecond of hesitation as he considers if what he wanted was more important than his master’s wishes. 

 

She believes he’d grant her at least that moment of hope, however brief, because she’s been saved by him so many times already. She likes to believe she’s got him a little figured out. 

 

So, she also believes dealing with his … whatever was bothering him, will just be a pain in the ass (pardon her swear) and she’ll have to pull out the heavy brandy when he leaves just to help settle her nerves. 

 

Which are rather unsettled at the moment, as he really hasn’t said anything since he asked that stupid question. She would have assumed he had ran off again, if he hadn’t been staring holes into her back. 

 

Also if he hadn’t made himself a cup of tea. The smell wafting off the brew was clearly the blend she preferred, and the fact that he had decided to drink it and not call it swill was agitiating her even more than his eerie silence. 

 

But, she’s prepared for anything he’s going to throw at her. Any question he’s got, she’s gonna answer it straight. She can do this, and hopefully, with minimal damage to her wits. 

 

It isn’t until she’s finished making her salad - and his - that he opens his mouth again.

 

“Are you a virgin?” 

 

Is what he asks, and by the gods wrath, there wasn’t anything to prepare her for that one, she nearly throws the salads at him in complete and utter shock.

 

But he’s tilted his head, she notices, and it’s clear as she loves the colour pink, he’s thinking carefully about this. Or just trying to be more of an ass than usual. 

 

“No,” she states, setting down the salads on the kitchen table, the one they would use for tea.

 

His shock isn’t hard to catch, his brows raise ever so slightly and his frown ever so slightly deepens. She supposes, maybe if she wasn’t studying him she wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

 

“My, Filia,” he says, raising a gloved hand to his mouth, acting ever so scandalized, “a priestess of the Fire Dragon King sleeping around with men like some common brothel whore? What would the Supreme Elder have had to say about this matter?”

 

Filia counts to ten. Then to twenty. She un clenches her jaw, calmly releases a breath. Counts to thirty.

 

“With women,” she carefully says, looking him in his stupid smiling face, “when the priestesses were young, not yet mature enough to follow the teachings of the temple fully, we, well, were in very close quarters with each other.

 

“Goodness knows when you spend so much time sleeping, bathing, and breathing amongst each other for so long, you get ideas. And those ideas become actions.” She looks off into the distance, lost in a world long, long, behind her.

 

“Oh my,” Xellos sneers in that jovial way of his, “not so pure are you?”

 

Filia throws an almond at him, “I denounced the Fire Dragon King, I’m no longer bothered by any of it.” It meaning the whole purity scale and not whatever else.

 

Xellos hums a little, who knows what was going on his head. 

 

So she takes his reverie as a free pass to enjoy her meal. And after a few mouthfuls and he still hasn’t said anything, she decides the silence is just too much to take, and starts talking about it some more, “I’ll have you know I was rather popular back then, all the girls loved me. I had five love letters a week.”

 

He smiles at her. She winces and regrets opening her big stupid mouth. 

 

“Aren’t you curious as to if I’ve ever slept with someone?” 

 

Oh.

 

No.

 

No. No. No. No. No.

 

Filia swallows a breath sharply, pinches her eyes shut, counts to ten, twenty, thirty, forty, much to fast, fifty, sixty, seventy. None of it helps calm her shot nerves, helps her remove that thought and voice and sentence from her head. She looks back at him, to see if it was all real, and his eyes are open. Studying her. This is serious to him. 

 

So she sucks in her pride, her dignity and resigns to her fate of having a sex talk with Xellos at her dinner table. “No, Xellos, no, the thought never crossed my mind.”

 

He tuts. And wags his pointer finger. All smirking like a crocodile, knowing she hates it, “but we’re domestic aren’t we, why wouldn’t sex come into the picture at some point.”

 

There’s a list, a list of things Filia never wants to hear Xellos say. 

 

The list included things like, “I’m pregnant. You’re the father Filia,” as he was a monster, and she really didn’t care to know how monster’s procreated but  _ oh dear gods, that would be the worst way to do it _ .

 

Another being well, silence on the matter of breaking her favourite vase/cup/mace. Silence used to just mean compliance. But silence now also means that you’re too ashamed to confess your doings, however wrong or right they were. She had learned that from her father rather recently.

 

The top thing, the reigning thing on this list, was something along the lines of Xellos stealing Val from his crib and carrying him off to the astral plane to be raised as a monster; a tool in their quest of world-wide suffering. She didn’t care much as to how he would say it, but just the fact of the act alone, would tear her heart out of her chest and send her into such despair, she’d hope he’d personally choke on it.

 

But, but now, now, that. That was the top thing. But she had heard it, so it’d never be listed, but gods, did she desperately want to have had it listed, because then she’d at least have some sort of mental preparation for when he’d spew the putrid nonsense from his mouth.

 

So she just stared at him. Mouth agape, eyes open wide, displaying some emotion near shock, but also disgust and horror. 

 

He did not seem to revel in her reaction. 

 

Perhaps it was because she wasn’t embarrassed or angry. Not even sputtering.

 

Because, to be completely honest with herself, she had given this question some thought. Late at night. Very, very, very late at night. Usually after drinking a little too much brandy. Which was probably why it wasn’t on the aforementioned list. 

 

She’d wonder how far whatever it was - the strange domesticality - she had with Xellos would go. And if it would end up in her bedroom, and well, if they’d do anything there. What sort of things would go on there, in her bedroom, very, very, very late at night with Xellos sharing her bed. She’d wonder about that sort of thing sometimes. 

 

She tended to be shocked, disgusted and horrified when she recalled what she was thinking before she went to sleep, and tried her darndest to wipe her memory clean until the next time it happened. Then she’d do it all over again.

 

Not so much in the months he’d been gone, as she had decided to write him off, never to be seen again, that she’d done something to make him decide she really wasn’t worth whatever it was he saw in her.

 

She may have had done it once or twice, though. And she may have let her imagination get the better of her, which, in her defense was perfectly acceptable as she hadn’t really expected him to show up again. Ever. It was just pure fantasy.

 

But he came back. 

 

And now she had to deal with her silly little thoughts because he could bring it up so casually. 

 

As if it was more than a silly idea in her head that she dared not to act on or bring up ever. 

 

As if it was a possibility for them.

 

To have him, state it, so clearly like that, well it just, shook her out of her comfort zone. It took out everything she knew about the world and removed herself from it. Out and into some unknown world where Xellos was actually a cassanova the whole time, and his stupid purple hair was a wig he used to make humans think little of him.

 

Filia noticed his hands started fidgeting - he seemed to always need to move his hands, while talking, idly, when he was thinking - smoothing his cup, following the gold lines. 

 

Her lack of reaction - well, the kind of reaction he was used to the kind he took great pleasure in receiving from her, must have made him slightly uncomfortable.

 

So she figured she had taken too much time to be silently shell shocked. She needed to say something. Anything but what he didn’t need to know - that she had the audacity to imagine being physically intimate with him. Silence is compliance. Silence means shame.

 

So she steadied herself, composed herself best she could. He was actually bothered by this, and it wasn’t just something to tease her with. This was serious business to him. 

 

“Well,” she nearly croaked, “do you want it to be?”

 

Her father’s gods take pity on her soul, may they allow her rest after her departure from this world and the life she had led, after atoning for her ancestors sins and raising their foul foe an infant, after finding domestic bliss in their wicked enemy who had slain many of her ancestors ---

 

“I wouldn’t know,” he says, placing a finger on his lips in thought, “all you mortals seem to enjoy it, but I just can’t seem to get into it.”

 

Well, that made sense, Filia decided, nodding triumphantly to herself in her head. Wouldn’t really make sense for monsters to get hot and bothered all the time when their entire goal was to sow discord and mayhem, not fuel romance novelists with material to write about.

 

So Filia nodded to him. “So, it doesn’t have to be.” That was safe. That was good. That drew a clear line in their relationship. That was so very excellent, there would be no sex having in this household. Especially with vile monsters like Xellos, oh thank the heavens above.

 

“Unless you want it to be, then I think I’d be okay with it.” Xellos mused.

 

Filia blanked. There was no pause.

 

“Do you want to have sex with me? I heard it’s what domestic couples do.”

 

And just like that, everything was wrong again.

 

Filia threw the remainder of her salad at him. She was livid. Romaine lettuce leaves, cut tomato slices, red onions, almonds, salad dressing and cranberries thrown into the air with a fury, decorating every surface but him. The bowl clanged to the floor, the drum starting the beat to her rage.

 

“Xellos you pig, you need to have love if you want to have sex with someone ---”

 

“Brothel girls seem  to do it just fine without ---”

 

“They get paid to do it! That’s their job, they have sex with men and women to get paid!”

 

He paused, his mouth forming a tiny o, as he processed this information.

 

“The men who have sex with them just have lust to carry on the act.” she said, towering over his seated form.

 

Hands balled into fists, itching to wail on him, “there is no love there, between them.”

 

And just as he was about to open his mouth to say something ridiculous, she finished her thought. 

 

“And there is no love between us.”

 

And that was the thing that hurt her the most about  _ it _ .

  
  


\---

  
  


Well, that word alone, should have smacked him to the floor in a pitiful slump. But it didn’t. 

 

There was so much negativity swirling in Filia, that that little four letter word had no effect on him. 

 

Maybe that was how it worked. It seemed like everything Filia did these days - well, ever, if he had to be honest - didn’t really have any sort of affect on him. Her little tunes about positivity and love and hope never got him on his knees, clutching his heart as dread washed over him.

 

Ever. 

 

And Filia was a positive, love filled and hope ridden girl. She just had so much of it to go around.

 

When he was away, far, far away from the house, and the tea cups, and  _ her _ , he tried to discuss it, the thing he had with Filia, with Lord Beastmaster. But all she did was stare at him as if he was some sort of three headed goat, an anomaly of nature and the laws of the universe. As if he wasn’t well, the normal, run of the mill monster. As if he wasn’t Xellos who had slaughtered thousands of Golden Dragons, but some, strange, strange little creature who had become domesticated by one.

 

But then, Lord Beastmaster just called him a fool and sent him back here until he had figured things out. 

 

Maybe she had expected him to learn from this, whatever it was.

 

So he turned to look at Filia. She was upset, that much was clear, even without his monster senses. Her eyes were glaring at him hotly, her fists clenched tight, and her shoulders squared, ready to give a (futile) knock-out blow. 

 

She was also trembling. 

 

He thought she might cry if he said anything else. 

 

And he oh so desperately wanted to compare her to a star at that moment. The kind that are just about to implode into billions of dust and take everything around them into a black, pitchless void of nothing.

 

He very much thought it suited her. 

 

So, to save her the shame, and to keep his amature poetry to himself, he kept his lips sealed shut, and settled into thinking. Reviewing the facts about it, the whatever between them.

 

These were; Filia accepted him for who he was, even after all that time he had to remind her they were foes in the grand scheme of things; him a monster, and her a dragon. He only went to back to check on her just to get a good laugh, but upon discovering this fact, he decided to stick around. This was the first thing. 

 

She then went out of her way to make him a special tea blend - based on what she thought best suited his tastes and she ended up correct. She even went so far as to design him his own cup to use when he showed up for tea. This was the second thing.

 

Then of course, there was Val, who had yet to hatch, and really wasn’t much use for anything yet. This wasn’t really a thing, but could very well be a thing. 

 

Then there was her house, which, according to the other monsters, screamed out positive energy and they had called him a sick masochist for even daring to step foot in there. This thing probably related to the first thing.

 

Another thing, was the thing about Filia even went so far as to repair his tea cup. It was very pretty now that there had been a jagged vein of gold running through the deformed darkness of it.

 

“What’s pretty?”

 

Filia was now at his feet, cleaning up the mess she had made throwing her dinner at him, her face contorted into what was best described as curious fear.

 

He really hadn’t meant to say that aloud. But this was is hole to dig now, “the cup,” he said, now bringing it to her attention, hoping she would see the gold would glitter a little in the lamp light. 

 

“Oh.” she said, her shoulders sagging as if some great tension had left her body. 

 

And then she started laughing. A large smile cracked over her face, and the laughter bubbled up like helium balloons lifting up into the sky. 

 

He was sorely disappointed she probably didn’t see the glitter, what with her clutching her sides, trying not to fall back onto the kitchen floor, eyes closed tight as laughter shuddered and racked her frame. 

 

“Have you finally lost your rocker?” he asked the dragon laughing on the floor, watching her writhe in merriment by his feet.

 

She waved goodbye at him, still giggling, “you need to leave,” is all she said, with a goofy smile on her face.

 

Well, this was peculiar. 

 

No way he’d leave now, “I think I’d rather stay,” he said.

 

She sighed, a happy smile on her face, perhaps plastered on to encite good will, got up from her seated position, brushed off her skirt, didn’t look back at the mess on the floor, walked up to her cupboards, reached with her tippy toes to grab a bottle off the top shelf. 

 

A bottle of brandy.

 

How had he not noticed that before.

 

She then pointed to him, “you’re a monster.” her crazy smile cracked through her face, “and I’m a dragon.”

 

She proceed to take a swig of it, and meander out of the kitchen and down the hall, either to the bathroom, or her bedroom. 

 

Both of which he had no problem following her to.

 

So he picked up the salad she had taken the time to prepare her, expecting to tease her with the food she hadn’t gotten to enjoy, and followed after her.

  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


Filia shut the door behind her, and walked to her bed, to fall face first into her duvet. She screamed a little, allowing the fabric to stifle it. 

 

She slumped over the edge, resting her head on the mattress, and she cradled her expensive brandy in her arm, contemplating her life choices that led her here in utter self hatred and misery.

 

Until that is, Xellos kicked her bedroom door down. 

 

“Why can’t you learn how to use a door properly?!” she screamed, shaken out of her mood by the loud bang and his stupid attitude, “and go away! I don’t want you here!”

 

“Filia it was rather bold of you to move the conversation to the bedroom.” He cheerfully announced as if he hadn’t just destroyed her door. As if he hadn’t gotten the message that she was done with him.

 

She just fumed. 

 

“Xellos, I told you to go away.”

 

“Nothing in the world is as interesting as being here,” one of his eyes were open, finding amusement in the whole scene.

 

She furrowed her brows, “Well, go back to your master, at least.” she clicked her tongue, “go home.”

 

He looked off to the side, maybe catching the reflection her mirror, “Lord Beastmaster forbade me from returning until I sorted it out.”

 

Well, that was new. 

 

But she didn’t know what it was that was. And maybe if she helped him, he’d leave and get out of her hair and maybe, hopefully, never come back. “What out?”

 

He gestured to the space between them, “this.” 

 

Oh. Ah. 

 

He didn’t understand it. Maybe there was hope there yet.

 

“Xellos, you know what that is, it’s just being domestic.” Filia straightened up, shifting to lean her back against the bed, folding her knees under her chin, “you rather enjoyed the afternoon tea and tormenting me as I cleaned it up. It’s just a part of it.”

 

He seemed lost, which was a truly strange thing to see on Xellos’ face. But he caught his thoughts and shook his head, “no, no, Filia my dear foolish dragon. There’s something else there.”

 

Knitting her brows she gaped at him, “what else could there be?”

 

“It’s something.”

 

And they fell into an oddly comfortable silence as Xello stewed over it. 

 

She tried not to think about it. Because then she’d have to remember that he had been willing to have sex with her - not even in her wildest dreams did she ever think he’d consent to it in real life.

 

Which, honestly, just made her face really hot to just think about. Hopefully Xellos wouldn’t notice, what with his head off in space, he would be insufferable about it.

 

She takes a peak to glance up at him, posed like some great mind thinking - only to lock eyes. And she knows that he saw her red face and that he’s going to tease her, but she remembers what he said now.

 

“You called me dear.”

 

He seems to stop forming coherent thoughts. Eyes open wide for all (Filia) to see as her processes this information. This, apparently slip of the head to mouth word forming process.

 

“You do it a lot,” she says, looking away hastily, the corner looks very attractive right now, “didn’t really seem to mean much, just one of your quirks, but…” 

 

But now, now maybe there’s something else to it.

 

She doesn’t really want him to come to terms with whatever it was. She honestly just wants to keep up the afternoon tea meetings, where he goes on in gruesome detail about that eighty foot long centipede he had disemboweled last week.

 

That sort of thing was much more tolerable than the unknown they had crossed.

 

Especially with Xellos looking at her like that. What, did he suddenly remember she was nothing more than an animal, an insect to him, something he’d have no problem removing from this world.

 

And then he lunged.

 

And she had screamed. Clamping her eyes shut, waiting with baited breath to feel the slick blood slip down her chest and the smell of rust engulf her senses.

 

But it never came. 

 

She opened her eyes, and Xellos was pointedly staring at her, his weird lightly coloured eyes focused on her as if she was the only thing that mattered.

That was a nice sentiment, sure, but. But. 

 

“Filia,” he said then, “my dear dragon.”

 

She crumpled against the bed. Fearful of what came next.

 

“It’s lust.”

 

And so the rage came back. With the power and force of a supernova, she bristled with the intensity of the ancient fire of her denounced dragon king.

 

“No you idiot,” she screamed, pushing into his space, to yell that fact into as much of him as possible. 

 

And without much thought of anything else, let alone previous acceptance of the words to spill from her mouth, shouted “I love you!” 

 

When her ears caught up to her tounge which caught up her mind, she regretted ever allowing herself to learn to speak. It was a mistake. She didn’t even decide on it. Her silly fantasies were just stupid images created from her mind. They didn’t equate this word. They shouldn’t ever be that.

 

But no, no, she had shoute that word, that confession loud enough her neighbors could probably hear. Loud enough it probably bounced around Xellos’ head like a ping pong ball.

 

Looking at him now, she half expected him to combust into a bunch of nothing, based on the intensity she had allowed him to know her feelings towards him.

 

But he did no such thing. 

 

He just stared back at her. His mouth reflected no thoughts. His eyes betrayed no thoughts. 

 

He didn’t keel over in utter disgust for her putrid little happy emotions, didn’t phase out of existence like a slap to the face to get out.

 

He just sat there, staring back at her.

 

“Oh.” he said.

 

“Yeah!” she agreed hotly, moving away from him, the pangs of regret already pulsing through her thoughts. She shouldn’t have done that. It was a mistake. 

 

They didn’t do much after that. Just sat there, Xellos still positioned from her confession, Filia had inched her way up to her bed, ready to crawl under the sheets and forget this.

 

“So the reason,” he said after a while, “is that you love me. That’s why I’m not bothered.” 

 

She glared at him, “I honestly don’t think loving a monster makes them immune to it.”

 

He looked troubled, “but why, then. What is it.”

 

Filia gripped her pillow, needed something to theater her to the mortal realm, something to throw at him if it was necessary.

 

“Xellos, do you love me then?”

 

He paused. Looked at her. 

 

He didn’t explode into nothing from that. That… was a sign of something.

 

“I’m a monster, you’re a dragon,” he said. 

 

“This has been established for years now,” she gritted through her teeth.

 

He didn’t seem to have heard her, still lost in his thoughts. 

 

“And, and you love me. You know me, and you love me still.” he mumbled. 

 

She just wanted to hide away in some hole.

 

“And, I know you. I know you and I still … come back.” he finished lamely. 

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“Well,” he said, finally with his stupid smile, “I guess it means I feel the same.”

 

She lost all the nerves she had left. And then he got up and walked over to her bed. She branished her pillow like a weapon that could hurt him if he got any funny ideas.

 

“So do we have sex now?”

 

Which resulted in him getting smacked in the face with the pillow. 

 

This really must have been an off day for him.

 

When the pillow decided to succumb to gravity, he didn’t look none to pleased with her, “Filia, Filia, Filia” he chastised, “that hurt. And here I thought you harboured feelings for me.”

 

“Don’t twist my words around,” she shrieked, huddling closer into the corner of the bed, “I said I loved you, not that I’d have sex with you!”

 

“But you did say that you wouldn’t have sex without love,” he smiled, pointing his finger up as if it was the winning point to this argument. 

 

She thrashed her legs against him, trying to kick him off balance, off the stupid bed, “go away, go away, go away,” she chanted as he easily took everything she could force into her kick.

 

“I told you, Lord Beastmaster wouldn’t allow me back until this was figured out,” he smiled, catching her foot.

 

She threw enough force into a kick with the caught foot, and he staggered a little with it.

 

Then there was a clang. 

 

“What was that?” Filia asked.

 

“Oh, your dinner.” Xellos stated, shuffling closer to her.

 

“You picked it off the floor to feed to me?” she wailed.

 

“No, but that would have been a better idea, now that I think about it.”

 

“Xellos!” she shrieked. 

 

He just smiled.

 

She just kicked him in the face.

 

He was stunned. 

 

Then there was a loud cry.

 

“What was that?” she asked him.

 

He frowned, “that, my dear, I would not know.”


End file.
